Santiago de Cuba city

Beautiful, heady SANTIAGO DE CUBA is the crown jewel of Oriente. Nowhere outside Havana is there a city with such definite character or such determination to have a good time. Spanning out from the base of a deep-water bay and cradled by mountains, Santiago is credited with being the most Caribbean part of Cuba, a claim borne out by its laidback lifestyle and rich mix of inhabitants. It was here that the first slaves arrived from West Africa, and today Santiago boasts a larger percentage of black people than anywhere else in Cuba. Afro-Cuban culture, with its music, myths and rituals, has its roots here, with later additions brought by French coffee planters fleeing revolution in Haiti in the eighteenth century.

The leisurely pace of life doesn’t make for a quiet city, however, with the higgledy-piggledy net of narrow streets around the colonial quarter ringing night and day with the beat of drums and the toot of horns. Music is a vital element of Santiaguero life, whether heard at the country’s most famous Casa de la Trova and the city’s various other venues, or at the impromptu gatherings that tend to reach a crescendo around carnival in July. As well as being the liveliest, the summer months are also the hottest – the mountains surrounding the city act as a windbreak and the lack of breeze means that Santiago is often several degrees hotter than Havana, and almost unbearably humid.

Although Santiago’s music scene and carnival are good enough reasons to visit, there are a host of more concrete attractions. Diego Velázquez’s sixteenth-century merchant house and the elegant governor’s residence, both around Parque Céspedes in the colonial heart of town, and the commanding El Morro castle at the entrance to the bay, exemplify the city’s prominent role in Cuban history. Additionally, the part played by townsfolk in the revolutionary struggle, detailed in several fascinating museums, makes Santiago an important stop on the Revolution trail.

One downside to a visit here is street hustle in the downtown area. Begging and being propositioned is an unbearable problem, especially in and around Parque Céspedes. The level and persistence of hassle is worse than in any other Cuban city – and women travelling on their own, in particular, need to grit their teeth.

Brief history

Established by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1515, the port of Santiago de Cuba was one of the original seven villas founded in Cuba. Velázquez, pleased to find so excellent a natural port near to reported sources of gold (which were quickly exhausted), named the port Santiago (St James) after the patron saint of Spain. With the construction of the central trading house shortly afterwards, the settlement became Cuba’s capital.

After this auspicious start – boosted by the discovery of a rich vein of copper in the foothills in nearby El Cobre – the city’s importance dwindled somewhat. Buffeted by severe earthquakes and pirate attacks, Santiago developed more slowly than its western rival and in 1553 was effectively ousted as capital when the governor of Cuba, Gonzalo Pérez de Angulo, moved his office to Havana.

Sugar, coffee and slaves

Santiago’s physical bounty led to a new boom in the eighteenth century, when Creoles from other areas of the country poured sugar wealth into the area by developing plantations. The cool mountain slopes around Santiago proved ideal for growing coffee, and French planters, accompanied by their slaves, emigrated here after the 1791 revolution in Haiti, bringing with them a cosmopolitan air and continental elegance, as well as a culturally complex slave culture.

Relations with Havana had always been frosty, especially as culturally distinct Santiago had fewer Spanish-born Penínsulares, who made up the ruling elite. This rivalry boiled over during the Wars of Independence, which were led by the people of Oriente. Much of the fighting between 1868 and 1898 took place around Santiago, led in part by the city’s most celebrated son, Antonio Maceo.

The US takeover

The Cuban army had almost gained control of Santiago when, in 1898, the United States intervened. Eager to gain control of the imminent republic, it usurped victory from the Cubans by securing Santiago and subsequently forcing Spanish surrender after a dramatic battle on Loma de San Juan. The Cubans were not even signatories to the resultant Paris peace settlement between the US and Spain, and all residents of Santiago province were made subject to the protection and authority of the US. As an added insult, the rebel army that had fought for independence for thirty years was not even allowed to enter Santiago city.

The Revolution and Santiago today

Over the following decades, the American betrayal nourished local anger and resentment, and by the 1950s Santiago’s citizens were playing a prime role in the civil uprisings against the US-backed president Fulgencio Batista. Assured of general support, Fidel Castro chose Santiago for his debut battle in 1953, when he and a small band of rebels attacked the Moncada barracks. Further support for their rebel army was later given by the M-26–7 underground movement that was spearheaded in Santiago by Frank and Josue País. It was in Santiago’s courtrooms that Fidel Castro and the other rebels were subsequently tried and imprisoned.

When the victorious Castro swept down from the mountains, it was in Santiago that he chose to deliver his maiden speech, in the first week of January 1959. The city, which now carries the title “Hero City of the Republic of Cuba”, is still seen – especially in Havana – as home to the most zealous revolutionaries, and support for the Revolution is certainly stronger here than in the west. The rift between east and west still manifests itself today in various prejudices, with Habaneros viewing their eastern neighbours as troublemaking criminals, and considered as solipsistic and unfriendly by Santiagueros in return.

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Basilica de la Caridad del Cobre

A lovely structure nestling in palm-studded forest 18km northwest of Santiago, the imposing cream-coloured, copper-domed Basilica de la Caridad del Cobre houses the icon of Nuestra Señora de la Caridad, Cuba’s patron saint, and is one of the holiest sanctuaries in the country. Pleasingly symmetrical, with three towers capped in red domes, the present basilica was constructed in 1927, on the site of a previous shrine. Inside, the icon has pride of place high up in the altar, and during Mass looks down over the congregation; at other times she is rotated to face into an inner sanctum reached by stairs at the back of the church, where another altar is always garlanded with floral tributes left by worshippers.

Soon after her discovery, local mythology endowed the Virgin with the power to grant wishes and heal the sick, and a steady flow of believers visits the church to solicit her help. A downstairs chamber holds an eclectic display of the many relics left by grateful recipients of the Virgin’s benevolence, including a rosette and team shirt from Olympic 800m gold medallist Ana Fidelia Quirot Moret, as well as college diplomas, countless photographs and, most bizarrely, an asthmatic’s ventilator.

Museo de Ambiente Cubano

Built in 1515 for Diego Velázquez, one of the first conquistadors of Cuba, the magnificent stone edifice on the west side of the park is the oldest residential building in Cuba. It now houses the Museo de Ambiente Cubano, a wonderful collection of early and late colonial furniture, curios, weapons and fripperies which offers one of the country’s best insights into colonial lifestyles, and is so large that it spills over into the house next door. There are also traditional music peñas here in the mornings on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

East of Santiago

Many of the attractions surrounding Santiago are east of the city, and you’ll need at least a couple of days to do them justice. Cool and fresh, the mountains of the Sierra de la Gran Piedra make an excellent break from the harsh Santiago heat, and the giant Gran Piedra is an extraordinary lookout point. Nearby, there’s the atmospheric, little-visited Museo Isabelica, set on one of several colonial coffee plantations in the mountains; and the formerly lovely Jardín Botánico, totally wrecked by Hurricane Sandy and closed to the public for the foreseeable future. Spanning the east coast is the Gran Parque Natural Baconao, not so much a park as a vast (and currently hurricane-raddled) collection of beaches and other tourist attractions, among them a vintage car collection and the Comunidad Artística Verraco – home, gallery and workplace for several local artists.

El Castillo del Morro San Pedro de la Roca

Just 8km south of the city is one of Santiago’s most dramatic and popular sights, El Castillo del Morro San Pedro de la Roca, a fortress poised on the high cliffs that flank the entrance to the Bahía de Santiago de Cuba. Designed by the Italian military engineer Juan Bautista Antonelli (also responsible for the similar fortification in Havana) and named after Santiago’s then-governor, it was built between 1633 and 1639 to ward off pirates. However, despite an indomitable appearance – including a heavy drawbridge spanning a deep moat, thick stone walls angled sharply to one another and, inside, expansive parade grounds stippled with cannons trained out to sea – it turned out to be nothing of the sort. In 1662 the English pirate Christopher Myngs captured El Morro after discovering, to his surprise, that it had been left unguarded. Ramps and steps cut precise angles through the heart of the fortress, which is spread over three levels, and it’s only as you wander deeper into the labyrinth of rooms that you get a sense of how huge it is. Now home to the Museo de la Piratería, El Morro is also notable for its daily cannon firing ceremony, which takes place at dusk, but the real splendour here is the structure’s magnificent scale, the sheer cliff-edge drop and its superb views out to sea.

The western beaches

The drive along the coast west towards Chivirico and beyond, with the seemingly endless curve of vivid mountains on one side and a ribbon of sparkling shallow sea on the other, is one of the most fantastic in the country, though potholes and hurricane damage make it somewhat treacherous after dark. About 15km from the city, don’t be put off by Playa Mar Verde, a small, rather grubby hoop of roadside shingle-sand with a café and restaurant; instead, carry on along the coastal road for another couple of kilometres to Playa Bueycabón. Here, an orderly lawn dotted with short palms stretches almost to the sea, and with its calm, shallow waters and narrow belt of sand it is altogether an excellent little spot to pass the day. There is a café here, but no other facilities.

Santiago’s carnival

The extravaganza that is Santiago’s carnival has its origins in the festival of Santiago (St James), which is held annually on July 25. While the Spanish colonists venerated the saint, patron of Spain and Santiago city, their African slaves celebrated their own religions, predominantly Yoruba. A religious procession would wend its way around the town towards the cathedral, with the Spanish taking the lead and slaves bringing up the rear. Once the Spanish had entered the cathedral, the slaves took their own celebration onto the streets, with dancers, singers and musicians creating a ritual that had little to do with the solemn religion of the Spanish – the frenzied gaiety of the festival even earned it the rather derisive name Los Mamarrachos (The Mad Ones).

Music was a key element, and slaves of similar ethnic groups would form comparsas (carnival bands) to make music with home-made bells, drums and chants. Often accompanying the comparsas on the procession were diablitos (little devils), male dancers masked from head to toe in raffia costumes. This tradition is still upheld today and you can see the rather unnerving, jester-like figures running through the crowds and scaring children. Carnival’s popularity grew, and in the seventeenth century the festival was gradually extended to cover July 24, the festival of Santa Cristina, and July 26, Santa Ana’s day.

The festival underwent its biggest change in 1902 with the birth of the new republic, when politics and advertising began to muscle in on the action. It was during this era that the festival’s name was changed to the more conventional carnaval, as the middle classes sought to distance the celebrations from their Afro-Cuban roots. With the introduction of the annually selected Reina de Carnaval (Carnival Queen) – usually a white, middle-class girl – and carnival floats sponsored by big-name companies like Hatuey beer and Bacardí, the celebration was transformed from marginal black community event to populist extravaganza. With sponsorship deals abundant, the carrozas (floats) flourished, using extravagant and grandiose designs.

Perhaps the most distinctive element of modern-day carnival in Santiago is the conga parade that takes place in each neighbourhood on the first day of the celebrations. Led by the comparsas, almost everyone in the neighbourhood, many still dressed in hair curlers and house slippers, leaves their houses as the performers lead them around the streets in a vigorous parade. The week before carnival starts, you can see the Conga de los Hoyos practising around town and visiting the seven other city conga groups every day from 3pm to 8pm.

Live Music and Dance in Santiago

Musical entertainment in Santiago is hard to beat, with several excellent live trova venues – all a giddy whirl of rum and high spirits, with soulful boleros, son and salsa banged out by wizened old men who share the tunes and the talent of the likes of Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo, if not their fame. You don’t have to exert too much effort to enjoy the best of the town’s music scene; the music often spills onto the streets at weekends and around carnival time, when bands set up just about everywhere. Sometimes the best way to organize your night out is to follow the beat you like the most. The best nights are often the cheapest, and it’s rare to find a venue charging more than $5CUC.